{"id":37519,"date":"2026-08-05T19:33:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T02:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=37519"},"modified":"2026-08-06T11:36:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T18:36:40","slug":"dum-de-d-u-m-dumb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=37519","title":{"rendered":"Dum De D-U-M Dumb"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tonight Donald Trump <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/atrupar\/status\/2085112862259790088\/video\/1\">reversed himself on dumb<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet tw-align-center\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Trump: &quot;Nobody knows that &#39;dumb&#39; doesn&#39;t have a B&quot;<\/p>\n<p>(Dear reader, it has a B) <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/isCik2OK0Z\">pic.twitter.com\/isCik2OK0Z<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/atrupar\/status\/2085112862259790088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 5, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>He came up with dumocrat all on his own, and since he can never be seen to be wrong, dumb shall no longer have a b. Hey, if Noah Webster, a low-ratings commoner, could Americanize flavour and colour by dumping the u, King Donnie can damn well un-b dum. Look for dum to become another MAGA litmus test, like Gulf of America and the Trump landslide of 2020.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong><span style=\"color: red;\">Update (8\/6\/2026):<\/span><\/strong><\/em> I shared this post with a friend who refuses to believe he really means it. She responds: &#8220;I don\u2019t think he knew what he was saying. But then, I suspect he doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s saying most of the time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m convinced he does. Trump has a long history of coming up with disparaging nicknames, &#8220;dumocrat&#8221; being one of the more recent ones. I was surprised to hear him include that &#8220;not everyone knows there&#8217;s a &#8216;b&#8217; in &#8216;dumb'&#8221; riff in recent speeches, because it&#8217;s an admission of wrongness (if there&#8217;s a &#8220;b,&#8221; it should be spelled &#8220;dumbocrat&#8221;). I think what happened is he finally realized he was pointing out his own mistake, and as ever, he cannot handle being wrong. Therefore, a kingly decree that henceforth &#8216;dumb&#8217; is to be spelled &#8216;dum&#8217; \u2014 he concocts alternate versions of reality and history; he thinks of himself as a king and has always tried to govern by decree. Changing the spelling of a word to cover up his own illiteracy totally fits, and is a logical next step in his narcissistic evolution. I look for MAGA to begin boycotting dictionaries soon.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>My self-maintenance schedule: haircuts every fifth Tuesday at ten, pedicures every eighth Friday at nine-thirty. As an official oldster with typical oldster issues, I see my doctor, my cardiologist, and my dermatologist every six months, and then there&#8217;s the annual eye check I wrote about in my previous post. All my appointments are within a six-mile radius of home, as is the Starbucks I stop at afterward for a take-home frappuccino reward.<\/p>\n<table style=\"width: 100%;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><a title=\"IMG_9671\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/halfmind\/55444504874\/in\/datetaken-public\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/55444504874_de1d383432.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_9671\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td><a title=\"IMG_9673\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/halfmind\/55444337146\/in\/datetaken-public\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/55444337146_19f06c2c1c.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_9673\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Here&#8217;s my haircut before and after. You may find it hard to tell much difference between these selfies, but there&#8217;s always a pile of gray trimmings under the chair when Jason&#8217;s done with me. Sorry for the intrusive wristwatch in the before photo \u2014 I thought I might post it to WatchCrunch later but decided they&#8217;d seen more than enough of me and my watches. Side note: I have a hard time telling my dark blue shirt from the black one, but the photo tells me I got it right for once, because I meant to wear blue that day.<\/p>\n<table style=\"width: 100%;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><a title=\"IMG_9660\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/halfmind\/55442854395\/in\/datetaken-public\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/55442854395_b1e1599a34_w.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_9660\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td><a title=\"IMG_9658\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/halfmind\/55442583808\/in\/datetaken-public\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/55442583808_7e8887f4bd_w.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_9658\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>And here are a couple of shots of vaguely-treatening monsoon skies over Tucson Monday evening. Donna and I were watching Rachel on MS-Now when our iPhones went off with loud weather watch alerts: a haboob was on its way, threatening zero visibility in blowing dust. The warning was premature \u2014 Phoenix did get blanketed in a dust storm, but not until Tuesday night; we didn&#8217;t get anything down in Tucson.<\/p>\n<p>Do I enjoy saying haboob? You bet, because it annoys the dum-dums.<\/p>\n<p>Stay fresh, cheese bags.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tonight Donald Trump reversed himself on dumb (video link). He came up with dumocrat all on his own, and since he can never be seen to be wrong, dumb shall no longer have a b.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4432,10,2,1601,21],"tags":[2320,4057,4918,4916,4917],"class_list":["post-37519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-seiko","category-current-events","category-personal","category-photoblogging","category-words","tag-resist","tag-fucktrump-2","tag-magalitmustests","tag-whosthatbehindthoseraybans","tag-youllsayhaboobandyoulllikeit"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37519"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37529,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37519\/revisions\/37529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}